HN could use a lot of features that would improve its functionality.

I think one of the reasons it's not quit so actively developed is the philosophy behind the project which has a lot to do with PG. He thinks people care about content, not features.

Another reason is that it's written in arc. It's hard to find lisp hackers, let alone arc hackers: http://arclanguage.org/forum

Hard to believe with the amount of emacs users on here.

If I'm any example, I think there are many many emacs users who are not very experienced in and certainly not proficient in LISP-like languages.

I know the basics of lisp syntax but have never coded anything substantial in it. A few helper functions here and there maybe. And I've used emacs for decades.

"Someone made a comment on one of mine quite a while ago, and I feel I have some information that could make their life easier as a result... yet I am unable to do anything to help them because of the time limit."

Just do what I do: click on their name, find a recent comment of theirs, and reply with a message to contact you via your profile email (or whatever) for a solution to previous problem. It's how I got a hold of at least one person here in same circumstance. A few others are on list when I get time for their more difficult areas of expertise.

The problem with that is that unless it is a recent comment of theirs, then they probably won't see it as there is no notification system in place.

I thought the recent part would be obvious. Thanks for showing it wasn't. I've edited my comment to say "recent" to be clear it has to be a comment they're likely to be looking at periodically for replies or other activity.

Since you've made it clear it must be a recent comment, by qualifying your statement with the token "recent", I would agree that this is a worthy solution.

I think leaving contact information on profiles is enough.

IMHO if someone hasn't added his contact information in their profile it would be safe to assume that they don't want to be contacted.

When I worked on HN we actually talked about this and specifically decided against it.

Currently, everything on HN is public, except for password (hashes), emails, and who [voted for|flagged|vouched] what. If all HN user data leaked right now, it would be a bummer, but not very scandalous.

We didn't want to be trusted with private communication. We're not perfect, and it's easier not to leak data you don't have =P

HN is not a social network. If people who post here want to be contacted out-of-band, they can put their preferences in their profile.

This could do a lot more harm than good: spambots, or even worse, recruiters.

Not saying it couldn't be done right, but it might be involved and go against the HN minimalist philosphy.

A "pm" could be implemented as a comment that only the recipient could see. It wouldn't necessarily require changes to the UI, maybe just another "private" comment state alongside "public" and the various "dead" states.

Although without a notification system (which would require changes to the UI) it would also probably be useless. Even without notifications, a link similar to the current "saved" link could lead to a list of pm comments.

As others have mentioned, clicking through to their profile and using any contact details they've left is the best bet for this. If there's no information there, they probably don't want to be contacted. But if you're someone who does want to be contacted, there are tools you can use to make sure you don't miss anything here:

* HN Alerts will send you an email whenever someone replies to one of your comments: http://www.hnreplies.com

* HN Watcher, monitors HN posts for keywords, or you can follow certain users & have their comments & submissions emailed to you: http://hnwatcher.com/

I don't want yet another inbox I have to check (ie HN private messages!), but listing contact details in my profile & having alerts sent to my email has been really useful to me.

I don't mind being contacted directly, so I put an email in my profile. On rare occasions people have emailed me. That seems to work

I prefer how HN makes it so that if you really want to contact them badly enough, you can figure out how to.